Google Chrome OS features

Over Google operating system blog, Alex chintu wrote about features he is awaiting on Chrome OS. I was about to post a comment on it. But I thought it would be better to make a blog post on the same.

As a Google fan web developer and tech enthusiast, I wish Google Chrome OS should have these features.

Speed

I love speed. Whether it be on road or even while browsing with a dial up connection at home.

Offline support

I love to be always online. But in India that is not possible. By offline , I mean I should be able to sync my files with my Pc with an authentication. That is, I can access my files offline in different computers and sync them all together when I am connected. PcSync provided by G.ho.st is having this facility to sync your ghost drive.

Apps offline

As a Google fan I would love to try everything came in the name if Google. So I tried Goodos. Assuming that it would be a must have for Googlers. It was quite disappointing that it doesn’t come with chrome browser, but enough to see FireFox. It comes with Google Docs as office application. But I am not a big fan of it because I can’t even open word prosessor when I am not connected. So I want Chrome OS to be with offline apps. Docs, Orkut etc apps should be available offline and loads and save file from your Google account.

Open authentication

As the main storage will be Google drive, it will be nice to see “Everyone can log in to any system with their Google account." then access to local drives can be restricted for such users. This enables users to take their desktop to next level. Say “Take your desktop to everywhere." I prefer ghost as Cloud based OS because I always have my desktop with me everywhere in a browser. But the problem is, entire desktop and it’s heavy script have to be downloaded every time. As Chrome OS will be based on cloud and apps are offline, it might load faster desktop.

Security model

Cloud is insecure in real life and also In Computing. When gmail is having downtime and Twitter hosted on amazons cloud is getting hacked, security is always a question. When Google docs was introduced, Microsoft asked “Which company will allow Google to host their business secret documents”. But earlier this year Microsoft announced their Office 2010 web app. So this means people aren’t really afraid of security, but they want technology to live.

You might have seen the bottom link of Gmail which shows your last logged ips and option to log out remotely. This one should be there in Chrome OS also.

Open API

People love Google because of their open model. Support they provided for open source community is one of the key point which lead Google to success in limited time. As Google wave is announced to be open source , developers are waiting to develop apps for Chrome OS also. As android app market is growing faster and iPhone app store hit one million apps developers will try their best in chrome app development.

Apple’s new terms and conditions and rejection of long waited apps like Google voice will redirect developers to a new Market for sure.

Windows application on Chrome OS

If any Linux version can run adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver, I will quite windows in the same day. I’ve been thinking of dropping out windows from my office from the day first. Virus attacks are pain for media agencies like us. Because we access direct FTP of our clients and what if a mal ware is found on popular client web sites! Male wares like win 32 salute are nightmare for php developers. They inject script for iframe in your code and once the script is executed by a visitor , it spreads the virus visitor Pc and inject the iframe in other php files on server.

Chrome OS isn’t a new concept. We have had JavaOS for some time from IBM and Sun though it didn’t make it far (I was a beta tester for them when I worked at FTP Software back in the 90’s). Java Applets were still to heavy and no one wanted to write the applications to make the os popular.

Basing Chrome OS on a Linux core is a good thing, making it open source is a great thing. Getting it on my $199 notebook to play with will be AWESOME!

I don’t think you will see enterprise users/companies go out and purchase notebooks for their users with Chrome OS on it, but you may see lots of home users start using them for their mobile computing and INTERNET needs. Techies like me will totally enjoy having another toy to play with, who knows maybe it will earn a permanent spot on my NoteBook and replace PuppyLinux.